Ethel Rosenberg - never a spy, but executed anyhow

Newspaper coverage on their execution day

Los Angeles Times

Read Anne Sebba’s biography, Ethel Rosenberg: A Cold War Tragedy (2021). Ethel came from modest Belarusian imm­ig­­rants, leaving school at 16 to support her fam­ily during the Great Depression and singing only at fund­raisers. In 1936 the love­ly young soprano Ethel Green­glass (b1915) was invited to perform at an Inter­national Seamen’s Union ben­efit. She was a confident singer who’d performed at Carnegie Hall. But this time she succ­eed­ed only with the support of an 18-year-old eng­in­eer­ing student, Jul­ius Ros­enberg (b1918).

Thereafter they were totally de­voted. They marr­ied in 1939 in a Lower East Side synag­og­ue, Julius being an elect­rical engineer and Ethel a union org­aniser. Both were Communist Party members. When Michael was born in 1943 and Robert in 1947, she became a loving mother and alented perform­er.

Ethel’s mother Tessie Greenglass, had fav­oured her son David Greenglass (b1922) and disapproved of daughter Eth­el. After years of Tessie’s crit­ic­ism, Ethel felt so insec­ure about her ab­il­ity to mother her own sons that she started ther­apy, as explored in in­ter­views with her therap­ist Dr Elizabeth Phillips. Phillips report­ed that des­p­ite the public vilific­at­ion of their par­ents, the boys th­rived due to Ethel’s good mothering. She was never a spy!

The couple taken to court, Julius in handcuffs

Trial

When Ethel Rosenberg was at the Women’s Detent­ion House in 1951, she’d sing in her sop­rano voice after-lights. Fellow pris­on­ers recalled that Ethel was well treated, even by the guards. But in the trial Rosenberg’s character was analysed for “feminine flaws”. She was 3 years older than Julius, so cont­em­porary American media dem­on­ised her as the force be­hind Ju­lius’ in­vol­ve­­ment with Soviet intel­lig­ence. 

Sebba docum­ented how the prosec­ut­ion manipulated the evidence against her and how she refused to testify ag­ainst her beloved husband, not even to spare her own life. Chief counsel was a very young Cohn Rosenberg trial who was much admired by both FBI director J Edgar Hoover and Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Cohn brutally questioned the suspected Communists, held his hearings in closed forums to minimise public scrutiny and questioned witnesses without limits.

Brother David gave evidence that Ethel had typed the notes ab­out nuclear weapons that Julius passed to the Soviets, seal­ing Ethel’s fate. The coup­le was executed as spies in June 1953. David, who spent only 10 years in gaol, later confessed to lying in court!

But in this powerful biography, Sebba was more int­er­ested in examining the political hysteria that burst over 1950s Cold War Amer­ica, and at the roles anti-Semitism and sexism played. J Edgar Hoover wrote a mem­or­andum to the Att­orney General sugg­est­ing “pro­ceeding against the wife might serve as a lever in the matt­er”. Even Pres. Eisen­hower, reluctant to have women executed, called her the spy ring leader! If Rosenberg’s sentence were to be commut­ed, Eisenhower feared the Sov­iets would simply recruit their spies from among women. The cowardly pol­it­ic­ians were res­p­onding mainly to the noisy crowds! As unease at the sent­ence grew in the US and elsewhere, even anti-capital pun­ish­ment Eleanor Roosevelt remained silent.

Even the electrocution at Sing Sing was gross; they had to give Ethel 5 jolts before the killing was done.

From Aug 1950, sons Robert and Mich­ael lived with maternal grand­mother, Tessie Green­glass. She quickly placed them in the Hebrew Chil­dren's Home. Paternal grand­­mother Sophie Ro­senberg soon removed them from the child­ren's home, so at least the boys could visit their par­ents in Sing Sing. After a year with Sophie, the boys were finally ad­opt­ed by song­writer-poet Abel Meer­op­ol and wife Anne and became Meeropols themselves.

Michael (born 1943) and Robert (born 1947)

when their were gaoled in 1951

What happened after the couple was executed?
Ethel’s brother David Green­glass admitted to a Grand Jury to passing nuclear se­c­rets to Julius Rosenberg from Los Alamos lab­or­­at­ory, New Mex­ico. And he admitted to lying to save his wife Ruth and himself; both of them bet­ray­ed Ethel in court. Thus Sebba’s book couldn’t be published until after the release of David’s test­im­ony, following his 2014 death.

Deciphered Soviet cables clarified that Julius Rosenberg was an ag­ent, as Sebba acknowledged. And Sebba agreed that Ethel, at worst, knew some­thing of what her hus­band was doing and did not report him. Mostly the biog­r­aphy was empathetic. Ethel was poor and drab, al­th­ough Sebba saw that she was also special: keen for self-improvement and dignity.

Note the goodness of Anne and Abel Meeropol who adopted the Rosenbergs’ sons; despite Ethel and Julius’ executions, the Meeropols helped the boys grow into sane, educated men. Nonetheless I Helen could not imagine living in a nation that murdered its own politically- or re­lig­iously-committed citizens. It all happened with the unthinkable haste that often attended moments of great political and moral peril.

Knowing their parents were executed for con­spiracy to pass atomic bomb se­crets to Soviet Union, the brothers hoped FBI and CIA documents could expose their par­ents' inn­oc­ence. So they sued under the Freedom of In­form­­at­ion Act, getting 300,000 secret documents from the 1950s released. From 1974-8, they worked actively with the National Committee to reopen the Rosenberg Case and the Fund for Open Information and Ac­count­ability, and published a book.

Ethel's brother, David Greenglass

taken into court, 1951

In 2008 Michael and Robert Meeropol said that, given rec­ent revelations by their par­en­ts' co-defendant engineer Morton Sobell, they saw Julius was involved in Soviet espionage. But there was no evid­ence that he par­t­icipated in atomic bomb secrets! On their mother, there was nothing!